


33. “What kind of flowers do you think we’ll have at our wedding?” “Our what now?” Fenris and F!Hawke

by Amata_Hawke



Series: Tumblr Prompts [7]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 08:52:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amata_Hawke/pseuds/Amata_Hawke





	33. “What kind of flowers do you think we’ll have at our wedding?” “Our what now?” Fenris and F!Hawke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lylypuceonarchive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lylypuceonarchive/gifts).



Viscountess Annabelle Hawke sat at her desk, restlessly shuffling the ubiquitous sheaves of parchment that tumbled haphazardly over one another. She would free one and attempt to read it, only to be distracted by the dry rasping of a dozen other sheets and the sudden need to lunge across the desk to prevent one or more of them from falling to the floor. She had attempted more than once to impose some sort of order on the piles that threatened to engulf her, but they grew so quickly that Hawke felt halfway certain that the documents must be breeding. Short of using magic to force the assorted documents to sort themselves and sit neatly in their allotted stacks, the entropic nature of such things simply could not be contained.

She was tempted to do just that, but she suspected the slow drain of mana from sustaining such a spell would prove too distracting, or else lead to a steady fatigue that would simply rob her of all personality. She could bespell the desk or even the entire room with a sort of temporary enchantment to enforce order on the place, but the thought of doing anything that made her role as the city’s leader seem to be anything more than transient felt distressingly blasphemous, despite the fact that she’d occupied the throne for two years now. The Divine had not objected to the Templars’ decision to elevate her to the Viscount’s throne, but neither had she endorsed it. Hawke was willing to fill the role for a time, given the growing unrest between the Circles and the Chantry, but the idea of keeping the iron circlet for too long made her uneasy. Especially given her own role in the aforementioned “unrest.” That was putting it mildly. A more accurate term would be “crisis,” or possibly, “powder keg approximately six inches from a roaring bonfire.”

The lamps that lit the room were sufficiently bright to allow her to read and write without much difficulty, but they were significantly more dim than the bright sunlight which ordinarily streamed into the room from the large window that dominated the wall at her back. With the crisp winter air slowly giving way to the first breath of spring outside, the sun was setting later every day. Even so, Hawke was still there well after nightfall. With her back to the dark window, fingers stained with ink, she hunched over for hours in a posture that would have earned her quite the lecture if her mother were still alive. Bran and Aveline had stopped entering the room hours ago, and then the servants had retired to their quarters. It was a typical night, all things considered. Hawke grimaced at the thought and resumed her attempt to focus on the report. Some tripe about how the Captain of the guard was unfairly bullying a nobleman’s son, assigning him to regular patrols in the cold, early mornings.

A sudden knock at the door startled Hawke out of her efforts to concentrate on the report in front of her. She glanced quickly up at the noise, then hissed at the sharp ache it triggered in her stiff neck. Wincing and rubbing the back of her neck with one hand, she sat back in her chair. 

“Enter,” she called, and Fenris let himself into her office.

He was armed and armored, as ever, but his intelligent green eyes were warm as they settled on her. Annabelle felt her own lips spread suddenly into a surprised grin. The wooden legs of the chair scraped noisily against the stone floor as she scooted it back in order to stand.

“Fenris,” she said, rounding the desk to greet him. It felt good to stretch her legs after so long sitting in one place. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I would have come sooner,” he replied, stepping into her and wrapping her in an embrace, “but the guards on duty at the door insisted you were busy. I had to wait for the shift change.” He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead in greeting. Anna still got a flutter in her gut whenever he did that.

Reluctantly, she released him and moved further into the room. Anna leaned a hip against her desk and motioned Fenris to take a seat in one of the chairs she kept in the office for visitors. While he did so, she frowned unhappily at his words. The guards had standing orders to let any of her friends,  _ especially  _ Fenris, come and go as they pleased, but this wasn’t the first time she had heard of Fenris or Merrill being kept away from her. Varric and the others came by fairly regularly, but Hawke suspected that Merrill and Fenris’ rare visits at the Keep had less to do with their personalities and more to do with discrimination than she had first thought. Between his silver tongue and his position in the dwarves’ merchants guild, Varric could get anywhere, but the elves….

It reminded her of some of the… “letters” she had been receiving since she had moved into Hightown, which her mother had solicited until her death, much to Hawke’s chagrin. They had only become more frequent since she had been named Champion, and even  _ more _ so since she had been appointed Viscountess. Thank the Maker that enough families were still sufficiently averse to magic that such letters had never come in especially great numbers, especially from outside of Kirkwall. Some of the gossip she had been getting second-, third-, and fourth-hand from Varric and Isabela, about the opinions and rumors circulating among the general public about Hawke and her “favorite companion”…. The occasional complaint that found its way to her desk about the number of elves, Fereldens, and other “riff raff” in Hightown—she took great pleasure in burning those ones. Bran’s voice echoed in her head, too, though the old argument hadn’t come up again in the last few months.

Settled into his chair, Fenris frowned back up at her. “What is wrong?” he asked.

“Nobles,” Anna sighed. “Hightown. Idiots in general. The guards are supposed to let you in, you know. I’ll have to feed them to Frost if they keep this up, and then Aveline will be short on men. She won’t be pleased.”

Fenris’s laugh, a low, rumbling chuckle, rewarded her attempt at humor. “No, she won’t.” He met her gaze steadily, considering her with mild amusement. “You have dealt with fools before, Hawke. What is it about these ones that concerns you?”

“I…” Anna dropped her gaze to the floor, worrying at her lower lip. This wasn’t a subject she wanted to discuss. It was ticking her off, and it was  _ her  _ problem, mostly. Fenris didn’t need to know about the letters from nobles asking for her hand for one political reason or another. She’d been getting them for years, and all of them had gone into the fire without a second glance. An annoyance, nothing more. She supposed it probably  _ was _ his business to know about the way the highborn of Kirkwall were reacting to the continued presence of former Lowtown residents now living in Hightown.  _ He  _ may never have lived in Lowtown, but many elves have been forced to relocate to Hightown since the destruction of the Alienage. That made all elves, including Fenris, into bigger targets. He could take care of himself, but….  

“Is this it?” Fenris’ voice behind her made her jump, bruising her hip where she’d been leaning on the desk. She turned to see Fenris standing in front of the pulled-out chair, looking at the mess on her desk. In her distraction, she hadn’t noticed him move at all. How long had she been hesitating?

He lifted one sheaf of parchment and angled it to better catch the light of one of the sconces. His eyes scanned back and forth over the letter, dark brows drawing together slightly as he read. 

“‘To the lady Annabelle Hawke, Champion and Viscountess of Kirkwall,’” he read aloud. Anna winced, knowing the words that would follow. She had read them dozens of times, on dozens of letters just like this one. “‘I was very pleased to meet you at Prince Vael’s coronation last year, and enjoyed your company greatly. I am writing to formally request your hand in marriage, to the benefit of both our houses’? What is this about, Anna?” Fenris looked back up to her, his expression puzzled. With a frustrated sigh, Anna buried her face in her hands.

“Nobles,” she growled. “Mother started looking for a match for me when we moved to Hightown. There weren’t many offers at first, but over the years…”

“You’ve been getting letters like this for nearly seven years?” Fenris asked, his voice incredulous. Anna looked up to see his eyebrows raised in surprise. “You’ve never mentioned them.”

Anna waved her hand in a vague, irritated gesture. “They didn’t  _ matter _ ,” she said. “I didn’t want anything to  _ do  _ with them, so I chucked them all in the fire as soon as I saw the words. I’d still be burning them as fast as I can open them, but the fireplace is, annoyingly, across the room here. I usually just burn them when I leave for the night. Less jumping up and down that way.”

“Well, I can see why this would be frustrating,” Fenris replied, and Anna was relieved to hear no anger or hurt in his voice. “I imagine these letters will stop once we are married. Perhaps we should get on with it, then.”

Hawke just stood there for a moment, arms falling to her sides dumbly, blinking at Fenris. Of all of the things he might have said, she hadn’t expected that.  Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined he would mention marriage at all, much less do it so casually.

“I-I’m sorry,” Anna stammered. “Once we’re… what now?”

Fenris shifted his weight with sudden uncertainty. “We had talked about this before. If you don’t want to go through with it….” He averted his eyes, brows furrowing again.

Anna gestured hastily. “No, no, I mean…  _ when  _ did we talk about this?” She rounded the desk to approach him, taking the parchment from him gently and twining her fingers with his. His fingers twitched at her touch and his eyes flicked back up to meet hers. Her lips curved into a humorous smile, eyes softening as she looked at him. “You know how completely, utterly, howling-at-the-moon mad I am for you, don’t you? I’ve been yours for… it must be five, six years now?”

A deep affection crept into his expression at her words. Fenris lifted his free hand to her face, sweeping a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, cupping her cheek gently. The lyrium embedded in his hands tingled gently against her skin. “I know,” he replied, his voice about an octave lower than before. “I feel the same. You know that, as well.”

Anna’s smile softened. “Then we’re in agreement,” she murmured. “We’re already devoted to each other, whatever the public thinks. That much we definitely talked about. I just… thought you wouldn’t be interested in the formality. The public spectacle.”

“You thought wrong,” Fenris said with a wry smile. “The spectacle, you’re right, I’d rather avoid. But if it is necessary so that the world can see that I am yours and you are mine, I will do it gladly. Especially now that I am aware of the fact that others have been propositioning you. I don’t like that.”

Anna’s smile broke out into a delighted grin. “Well, alright then!” She said, her head bobbing up enthusiastically, her heart soaring. The idiots and whiners of Hightown could hang for all she cared. “Let’s get married! What sort of flowers would you like?”


End file.
